Hardball Hyperbole: Chapter 6

In today’s edition, the Yankees dropped the first two games of a Fourth of July weekend four-game series, but rallied to win the last two as Byung-Hyun Kim, now with Boston, had another miserable time at Yankee Stadium. George Steinbrenner was so moved by his team’s performance, he actually shed some happy tears.

The guy who should have been crying was Red Sox closer Byung-Hyun Kim, the side-winding right-hander from South Korea who suffered another gut-wrenching meltdown in his personal house of horrors, Yankee Stadium.

Instead, after the Yankees walked off Boston on the afternoon of July 7, enabling them to split a four-game series after they had lost the first two games by the cumulative score of 20-5, it was George Steinbrenner who was bawling his eyes out.

“It’s my team and I’ll cry if I want to. You know, I’m getting older and as you get older you do this more,” Steinbrenner said at the end of an emotional day and emotional weekend when the Yankees and Red Sox traded haymakers for four consecutive days and nights, leaving New York right where it started when this latest get-together began: Four games ahead of Boston in the AL East just a week past the midway point of the season.

“I’m just so proud of ‘em,” said Steinbrenner, who attended all four games and saw his Fourth of July 73rd birthday spoiled by a 10-3 loss in the opener. “Winning is emotional to me. I get very emotional about it. This was a hell of a win. We really had to win this game to send them home to Boston wondering what the hell happened.”

Surely, the Red Sox had to be wondering exactly that. In the first two games they had pummeled David Wells and Roger Clemens in winning laughers to pull within two games of the Yankees in the division. But then Andy Pettitte, just as he had done in the previous series against the Red Sox, stopped them cold in a 7-1 victory, and Mike Mussina backed that up with his own masterpiece as he outdueled Pedro Martinez 2-1 to earn the split.

While the Boss’ eyes were moist, the Red Sox’ eyes were fogged over in a dead man’s stare. “We were looking for better than a split,” Boston’s Johnny Damon said. “This definitely puts a damper on our start.”

The finale was quite a matinee for the 55,016 on hand as Mussina and Martinez engaged in a tremendous pitcher’s duel. Mussina blinked early, allowing a run in the top of the first when Todd Walker singled and came home on a double by Manny Ramirez. But against a lineup that featured eight batters with averages of .293 or better and on-base percentages of .347 or better, Mussina retired 21 in a row before a two-out eighth-inning walk which he rendered meaningless by striking out Jason Varitek. His final line was eight innings, one run on two hits and a walk, nine strikeouts.

“Pedro threw an outstanding game, but I think Mussina threw probably, if it’s possible, even better against us,” Walker said. “We really had no chance in most of those innings.”

Walker was right. This wasn’t a vintage Pedro performance, but it was still pretty damn good - seven innings of one-run, five-hit ball, albeit against a weakened Yankee lineup of his own doing as he continued his long-running campaign to be the most hated pitcher to step foot in the Bronx.

He set off some post-holiday fireworks when he opened the bottom of the first by firing inside pitches at the first two batters, Alfonso Soriano and Derek Jeter. The one to Soriano just missed him but he hurt his hand trying to avoid the ball. He eventually struck out swinging and had to leave the game in the second inning. Pedro didn’t miss Jeter, buzzing him with a pitch that struck Jeter’s right hand which forced him out of the game in the third inning.

“I wasn’t trying to hit anybody,” Martinez said. “I didn’t have any reason to do it.”

Steinbrenner, his emotions back in check, naturally saw it differently. “I have no idea what’s going on in his head except that it didn’t look too good to me,” he said. “Two hitters? One of whom, Soriano, is on his way to the All-Star Game. If he did deliver a message, he delivered the wrong message!”

With their top two hitters in the lineup getting x-rays, it felt like a tall task for the Yankees against Martinez and they did nothing for five innings. However, quite appropriately, Soriano’s replacement, Enrique Wilson - who for some reason always hit Martinez well, 8-for-15 in his career - pulled a leadoff double down the line in right to start the sixth and later came around to score the tying run on Jason Giambi’s single.

Once Pedro was done, the storyline for this game took a big turn because the man Grady Little chose from the bullpen was Kim. He had been acquired from the Diamondbacks in a trade for infielder Shea Hillenbrand in late May, so how delicious was this?

As sympathetic characters go, Kim could lay claim to a starring role after what happened to him at Yankee Stadium in the 2001 World Series. It was Kim who was in the eye of the hurricane during two of the most amazing World Series games in the history of the Yankees which, obviously, is quite a thing for a franchise that counts 27 world championships.

The only word that even suffices for what happened on the back-to-back nights of Oct. 31 and Nov. 1 is unbelievable. Seriously, there really isn’t any other way to describe the drama that unfolded thanks to the right arm of Kim.

With the Yankees trailing 2-1 in games and down 3-1 with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 4, Kim served up a game-tying two-run homer to Tino Martinez that nearly reduced Yankee Stadium to rubble, so explosive was the celebration. There were many unforgettable moments in the old place, but that one was mind melting.

Kim proceeded to allow the next two men to reach base, but he struck out Shane Spencer to get the game to the 10th inning. And then incredibly, after Mariano Rivera mowed down the Diamondbacks, Arizona manager Bob Brenly sent Kim back out for the bottom half which, in hindsight, was calamitous. After he got two quick outs, Jeter put on a classic nine-pitch at bat which ended just after midnight when he sent a shot into right field that cleared the wall to tie the Series and earned him the nickname Mr. November.

According to the Elias Sports Bureau, it was the first time in World Series history that a team tied a game in the ninth inning with a home run and then won the game with a homer in extra innings. Of course, it had to happen first in Yankee Stadium, because, of course it had to.

Why Brenly didn’t take Kim out after the Tino gut punch was a mystery, and then to trot him back out for the 10th was even more puzzling. Even more puzzling is that 24 hours later, Brenly turned to Kim again, another decision that defied explanation.

Kim had thrown 61 mostly pressure-packed pitches in Game 4, yet with Arizona taking a 2-0 lead into the bottom of the ninth in Game 5, Brenly called on Kim to close it out. He probably figured that after what had gone down the night before, the odds were pretty astronomical that lightning could strike twice at the exact same address.

Instead, Jorge Posada led off with a double, and after two outs, here came that lightning bolt when Scott Brosius drove a home run to left field to tie the score. Again, simply unbelievable. Mercifully, Brenly yanked Kim right there but the Yankees went on to win in the 12th when Chuck Knoblauch singled and scored on Soriano’s walk-off RBI single. Of course, the Diamondbacks overcame all that and went on to win the series.

EDITORS NOTE: I can never stop watching the videos of these home runs. Two of the most incredible Yankee moments of all-time.

Now, two years later Kim was back at Yankee Stadium, playing for New York’s hated rival. The situation paled in comparison to those World Series encounters but still, he was now part of the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry and carrying some pretty hefty baggage on his narrow shoulders.

Kim worked an uneventful eighth inning, but his ninth-inning Bronx demons returned as Hideki Matsui and Karim Garcia singled, and Kim hit Posada with a pitch to load the bases. With every soul in the place standing and screaming, Kim struck out Robin Ventura and then induced Curtis Pride - who had just joined the team a couple days earlier - to hit a ground ball to second that could have either become an inning-ending double play, or at the very least a forceout at home. Instead Walker booted it allowing Matsui to sprint home with the winning run.

In the quiet Red Sox clubhouse, Kim defiantly proclaimed through a translator, “I thought I pitched pretty well. I pitched the way I wanted to pitch. I got ground balls. The mistake I made was to the leadoff hitter in the ninth, giving up that base hit. Continue to watch me. I have a long career ahead of me. Let’s see what the end results are. It’s too early to say that I am unlucky in one place.”

This taut, tension-filled game was nothing like the first three in the series, all one-sided blowouts.

When the Red Sox left the Bronx after their last visit in late May, they did so a half-game ahead in the standings, but in the five weeks since they’d gone a pedestrian 17-14 which allowed the Yankees to push four games in front. The most recent loss had come in Tampa when they blew a two-run lead in the eighth and lost on a two-out single in the 10th.

Brandon Lyon blew that save and as the Red Sox flew north to New York, Little decided to turn the closer role over to Kim who had saved 70 games in his career with Arizona including 36 in 2002.

“We’ll come out ready to play tomorrow,” Little said, a prediction he certainly nailed as the Red Sox crushed the Yankees 10-3. Soriano led off the bottom of the first against Derek Lowe with a homer and Matsui drove in a second run with a single. New York would continue to get men on base as they managed 10 hits and a walk on Lowe, but only one more run scored and on this day, that wasn’t going to suffice.

The annual fireworks show over the Charles River in Boston accompanied by the Boston Symphony Orchestra did not light the skies as spectacularly as Red Sox offense lit up the Bronx. Boston launched seven home runs - one by Ramirez and two each by Varitek, David Ortiz and Bill Mueller, most of the damage coming against Wells.

“It’s crazy how guys can hit on this ball club,” said Ortiz. “Wells was throwing some good breaking balls but he missed with some of them and we took advantage. But even when he made good pitches, we hit them.”

Nothing changed the next day when Ortiz hit two more and Trot Nixon hit one as Boston battered Clemens for eight runs in a 10-2 victory.

Some felt that the reason why Pedro had pitched inside with a purpose to Soriano and Jeter in the finale was in response to what happened in the second inning of this game. Clemens went up and in to Kevin Millar and hit him in the hand which drew some catcalls from the Boston dugout. The next batter, Trot Nixon, launched Clemens’ next delivery way over the right-center fence for a 2-0 lead.

Clemens feigned indifference regarding the pitch to Millar, even insinuating that Millar could have avoided the plunking. “Guys don’t get out of the way anymore,” Clemens said. “They’re just hunting balls so hard and they have so much plate coverage. It’s not a surprise. If you’re throwing a ball 85 or 88, you’ve got a chance. But I rush it. When I’m coming in, I’m coming in hard.”

Such a hard ass, always and forever.

“Whether it was done on purpose or not,” Nixon said, “it was good to get that one pitch, jump on it, and be successful.”

Millar said his jog around the bases ahead of Nixon “took all the pain away” and he added, “We don’t have to prove anything to anybody. They know we’re a good team, and they know the pressure is on.”

It was, which meant this was the perfect time for New York to have Pettitte on the mound for the third game. Despite all the times that Steinbrenner talked down about the gritty lefty and wanted Brian Cashman to trade him, Pettitte almost always stepped up with his best outings at critical times.

This was a guy who started 44 postseason games in his career, pitched in eight World Series (seven with New York) and compiled an ERA of 3.81. He was built for the spotlight, and while this Saturday afternoon game in early July didn’t rise to that level of importance, it felt like a pivotal point for the Yankees. They were in a slide, they’d been embarrassed two days in a row, and like Millar said, they knew this Boston team was unlike so many others in the past. The Red Sox were a legit contender for the AL throne.

It didn’t start well as Mueller hit his eighth pitch of the game into the left-field bleachers and the sellout crowd was already restless because it just seemed like the Red Sox relentless lineup was unstoppable. Thereafter, Boston never scored again as Pettitte went eight innings, struck out 10 and gave up just three other hits with no runner advancing even to second base.

“I don’t know if he’s pitched any bigger regular-season games, because of how we got beat up the last two days,” Joe Torre said of Pettitte.

The Yankees gave Pettitte all the support he needed, answering that Mueller home run with two runs in the bottom of the first courtesy of a leadoff Soriano double and RBI singles by Ruben Sierra and Matsui. They added a run in the third and then Pride - in his Yankee debut - homered off John Burkett to make it 4-1. Soriano tackled on a two-run triple and Jeter an RBI single to close the scoring.

“You’ve got to figure that when you go in and face this club in Yankee Stadium, every day is a new day,” Little said, trying to explain how his red-hot offense had been so neutered.

And when it happened in the finale, too, Little and the Red Sox left town frustrated with the four-game split. “It’s tough to accept the fact that we didn’t score any runs the last couple of days,” Little said. “We should have saved a couple of those home runs we got in the first two games, I guess. But it didn’t turn out that way.”

NEXT WEDNESDAY: Across three days at Fenway July 25-27, Boston’s Byung-Hyun Kim lost the first game in the ninth inning, then blew a save in the middle game only to be bailed out and wind up as the winner, before the Red Sox took the rubber game thanks to a couple bad pitching moves by Joe Torre that allowed Boston to win its first series against New York.

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